The 'Jim Crow' Injustice of Crack Cocaine Continues

http://www.theroot.com/views/jim-cr...im Crow' Injustice of Crack Cocaine Continues

The U.S. Senate recently reduced the sentencing disparities for possession of powder cocaine and crack, from 100-1 to 18-1. That's hardly progress.

Nothing symbolizes the conflicted state of U.S. race relations more than the tortured odyssey of crack cocaine. Federal sentencing enhancements for the drug, which we now know is pharmacologically indistinguishable from powder cocaine, date to the Reagan administration. They have had an astonishingly injurious impact.

Although surveys show that most users of cocaine, in all its forms, are white, African Americans and Latinos account for 96 percent of crack convictions, most of them low-level street dealers. Because the mandatory penalties are so harsh--possession of 5 grams yields a minimum sentence of five years--African Americans with crack raps are now serving as much time in federal prison as whites convicted of violent offenses. Federal District Judge Robert Sweet calls it "Jim Crow justice."

The U.S. Sentencing Commission has proposed relaxing special penalties for crack since 1991, arguing that it would do more to reduce racial inequality in criminal justice "than any other single policy change." Yet Congress has declined to act for a generation. With the election of Barack Obama and Democratic majorities in both houses, reformers hoped for a breakthrough at last. But when the Senate finally reached a deal on the Fair Sentencing Act in March, it only partly closed the penalty gap. Under the current rules, crack possession is treated 100 times more severely than powder possession, based on drug weight; under the new rules, which the House is expected to approve before the summer recess, crack possession will be treated 18 times more severely.

"I gave a little, and they gave a little," said Sen. Richard Durban (D-Ill) of his negotiations with Republicans, who insisted on maintaining unequal sanctions. The result is a sort of progress, but it means that tens of thousands of crack defendants, the lion's share of them young black men, will continue receiving longer prison terms than their coke-snorting counterparts--and with no justification supported by evidence. Seven score years after the end of slavery, America still can't do better than halting steps toward equality.

Because of their undeniably inequitable outcomes, the nation's crack laws have come to represent the persistence of de jure discrimination in the post-civil rights era. But they are only a fraction of the problem.

The expansion and hardening of criminal justice writ large has had similarly pernicious effects. A half-century ago--before the Freedom Rides and the March on Washington--African Americans went to prison at about four times the rate of whites; today, African Americans go to prison at seven times the rate of whites. Fifty-six years after Brown v. Board of Education, black men in America are more likely to go to prison than graduate from college.

These statistics are widely known and shamefully tolerated, but we are only just beginning to reckon with their historical significance. In my book, Texas Tough, I argue that the rise of mass imprisonment constitutes a watershed retreat from freedom not unlike the collapse of Reconstruction. In the aftermath of the Civil War, black Americans made tremendous strides toward equality under federal protection, only to be driven back to second-class citizenship by a protracted campaign of white terrorism led by the Ku Klux Klan. The result was convict leasing and Jim Crow segregation, which deferred the full promise of emancipation for a century. As W.E.B. Du Bois put it, "The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery."

In our own time, the punitive revolution in criminal justice followed a similar path in the wake of civil rights. White Southern conservatives reluctantly yielded to integration but managed to reclaim votes and legitimacy by getting tough on crime. Zero tolerance, mandatory minimums and merciless drug statutes were not just responses to illegality but fearful, politically calculated reactions against urban disorder, youth rebellion and black mobility. In short, modern America has institutionalized the advice of Texas' arch-segregationist, U.S. Sen. Joseph Bailey, who once remarked, "I want to treat the Negro justly and generously as long as he behaves himself, and when he doesn't, I want to drive him out of this country." Through the prison system, we have done just that. Although Jim Crow has been banished from the free world, the Joshua generation is being driven into captivity.

At the start of the Obama era, there is some hope for change. Largely in response to government-revenue shortfalls, politicians across the country are trying to rein in their runaway prison bureaucracies, which now devour $70 billion a year. At the state level, probation and parole reforms have contributed to a moderate decline in the nation's inmate population for the first time since 1972. In Washington, in addition to the deficient crack bargain, Congress is considering a national criminal justice commission to recommend policy changes across the board, from indigent defense to reentry. These steps show promise, but after 40 years of warring on drugs and building prisons, courage and persistence will be required to significantly reduce racial disparities in criminal justice and downsize the world's largest penal system.

 

I know, I seent 'im!

 

And both are worse than Vin Mariani or the original formulation of Coca Cola. Both were beverages infused with cocaine and sold to adults. Neither of these products caused many cases of abuse and these two beverages accounted for nearly 90% of the cocaine use in the country at the time. If we regulated cocaine and limited the forms that were generally available, we could provide responsible adults with a product that would be easy to use and difficult to overdose on.

That is what responsible regulation is all about. We provide a framework that allows people to exercise personal responsibility, heavily tax the products with the most potential for misuse and abuse, and track sales to identify problem users so that treatment options can be provided. If we really took this issue seriously, we could make MIP a thing of the past.

 

There is no genie, no magic involved, drugs aren't demons.

And the vast majority of people wouldn't have any desire to freebase cocaine. As it is, a very small percentage of people who use cocaine smoke it because there are a LOT of people who are able to use cocaine responsibly.

After Bayer started selling heroin, the estimates were that about 1.3% of the population was addicted to drugs (this number included cocaine, opium, and laudanum). When Nixon coined the phrase "War on Drugs" in 1972, it was estimated that 1.3% of the population was addicted to drugs. That number remains unchanged today, proving that no matter the policy, a constant percentage of the population is likely to become addicted to drugs. [statistics from LEAP]

No, but we can use our increased understanding of addiction science to intelligently attack drug abuse. Using your example of heroin, history has proven that even hardcore heroin addicts can be productive, taxpaying contributors to society. In Switzerland, they have had a prescription heroin program for coming up on two decades. The addicts who participate have demonstrated lowered criminality, higher rates of recovery, and most importantly, these people reintegrate into society.

Smart, tough regulation can help to prevent such enterprises. The only organizations that would be allowed to purchase in such large quantities would be licensed distributors. Don't get me wrong, there would be people who would try to do exactly that, but in the system I would design, we would track sales to identify cases of problem use. People who purchase quantities larger than would be normal for personal use would be targeted for a conversation with drug treatment professionals.

We can more effectively deal with the "junkies" once their drugs of choice are regulated. Those are the people who need our compassion and help, while the people who are able to be responsible with drugs (the VAST majority of drug users) need a regulated market that provides unadulterated products that we tax to pay for treatment for the people who are unable to use drugs responsibly.

We should not set policy based on the fact that some people cannot responsibly use drugs. We need to set policy that allows people to exercise personal responsibility while capturing tax revenues that will pay for the societal consequences of drug use and abuse.

 

Lighten up, Francis. I forgot to put in a , that's all.

Based on http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb...on+Drug+Use+and+Health,+2008 data from SAMSHA, the answers to their survey (55739 responses) in 2008 were as follows on the number of times people used cocaine in the last month.

1-2 Days 274
3-5 Days 108
6-19 Days 89
20-30 Days 42

If we break the answers in half, defining an "addict" as someone who uses cocaine six or more days per month, then roughly 2/3 of users would be in the "responsible" group. Even if you considered three or more uses per month "addicted," more than half of the people who reported cocaine use were using in a responsible manner.

The unfortunate part of these numbers is that they are highly suspect. People are less likely to self-report in a prohibitionist system and this fact distorts all the numbers we have. One of the side benefits of regulation would be the ability to actually study addiction in a controlled, scientific way. It has been nearly a century since we were able to do widespread studies on the effects of these substances, think what we could learn if we applied today's technology and research disciplines.

As are heroin and crack users, which is no surprise since the three are atop the list of the most addictive substances in the world. Cocaine, particularly snorted, is not as addictive as either of those by a long shot. If the numbers above are even close to representative, cocaine users are not, by and large, daily users.

There is a lot of behavior that isn't logical. That is the reason that the field of psychology came about and if applied properly, I think we can have a major impact on drug abusers by replacing our criminal justice approach with one focused on healthcare. I know that addiction is something from which people can recover because I worked in the field and saw it work time and time again. If we had the drug dealer's profits as tax revenues, we could pay for such a system many times over.

I think it is offensive that you are comparing drug abusers to pedophiles. Pedophiles deserve to be locked up under the jail for life, the VAST majority of drug users deserve to be taxed, not jailed.

Though this hypothetical is closer to reality, I don't think you are aware of how successful many treatment programs can be.

The number of people addicted to drugs has stayed constant through all of the different drug policies we have had over the last century. That tells me that policy has somewhere between little and no affect on the number of people who get addicted to drugs. If that is the case, then we should stop with the policies that exacerbate the harms and use the revenue turnaround (increased tax revenues and decreased criminal justice costs) to reduce the harms that drug use and abuse have on our society.

A regulated market is the best way to marginalize the black market. How big is the black market for beer and tobacco? It is minuscule because people would rather buy what they want legally, as they do with mar1juana in Holland. There are some things that the invisible hand of the market is good for and this is one of them.